Denver Years revised (okay, corrected) per Middle's comment

You will recall, Youngest was born in August, Mom had emergency surgery immediately thereafter and during the trauma was distressed enough that she selected Dad's next wife (to which he responded "thank you very much, but I'm not ready for a new wife, and should I need one, I'll pick her myself"), just in case anything went wrong and then, within a few weeks, we were off to Denver, Colorado.

Middle points out how Mom often talked about how the entire affair was disconcerting; she was uprooted at the most difficult crisis of her life, leaving the church she loved when she was barely back on her feet, etc etc etc.

Of course, moving was not uncommon to us at all, and our friends in Clinton were moving too, so we packed up the green station wagon and trekked across the prairie to the edge of the Rocky Mountains. The Air Force was generally "family-friendly" and usually scheduled these "rotations" for the summer when school was out, so we arrived just in time for Middle and I to start second grade.

Granny and Papa bought a house first thing (odd because I'm sure we knew we were short-termers). It was brand new and we were surrounded by new construction, heaven for me and the neighboring 9 year olds. We explored the empty fields and watched as the subdivision came to life, first when the road graders plowed what was to be the streets and then when the carpenters framed and finished framing. We rode on the bulldozers and scavenge scrap wood and other building materials tossed by the workmen for our own construction projects, all in easy view of the distant blue mountains, including snow crested Pikes Peak.

We moved in too late in the year to plant grass in the dark brown prairie dirt, and for several weeks before the first snow our yard was covered with the naturally occurring sage brush almost two feet high. I remember pulling the brush later that year, and Papa's reminder, "be sure to get the roots." We stacked the stalks to make walls for forts from which we tossed dirt clods at one another (me and the other 9 year olds again).

My best friend, Steve never changed his socks. In fact, he simply never removed them from his feet, something his mother pointed out to me at a sleep over. She insisted on washing them that day, and once in her hands, she banged them on the table to show me that they were hard as boards. Granny never tolerated that sort of thing.

I attended the local elementary school, about a mile from home. I rode my fat-tired, red huffy bicycle each day with my books in saddle baskets bolted to the back. The school required that we lock our bikes, so before the first day, Papa and I shopped the local "Five & Dime" for my first combination lock (that's the Five & Dime where we once later left Youngest Sibling--we just forgot her--and when we returned we found her standing in the toy aisle studying a pack of life savers without the slightest hint of concern).

I liked school, but recall my second grade teacher was "mean." I don't recall anything specific, just that she was "mean."

By contrast, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Henderson was my favorite ever. She seemed very old, and I recall lines and lines of wrinkles on her face and braided white hair. Our class was classified as accelerated, or something like that, so in addition to the normal work, we got to do extra fun things. I specifically remember we studied Native American Indians and made costumes (including hand-painted khaki shirts with shredded sleeves and the class favorite, a Mohawk hair piece made from a woman's stocking), and a full-sized Teepee made out of paper mache. We danced around the Teepee wildly, singing words that were meaningless to me then, but that I suppose were some sort of a harvest song (Yo We Ni Yo, Hi Yo Wicki Ni Yo, you got it--).

Mrs. Henderson also introduced us to Mark Twain, and we read aloud in class both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn among others. For birthdays, Mrs. Henderson would put a mall present in a basket on the bulletin board in the back of the room, and just before lunch, without announcing whose birthday it was, begin singing "Happy Birthday."

By the time the class got to the name of the honoree in the song, the birthday person was supposed to stand up, go to the back and get the present. I was not the least bit shy, but on my birthday, I remember thinking it was good to be reserved, and so the class sang the song three times while I sat there, hands folded (the posture Mrs. Henderson taught us to adopt when we had nothing to do--I folded my hands like that for years).

The air was tense with anticipation. Who was the birthday kid. And then, just when the crowd was ready, just as I was preparing to stand to retrieve the gift and accept the accolades of the day, another kid stood up, ran to the back of the room and swooped down on the present. I was mortified until Mrs. Henderson interrupted and reminded the kid that her birthday was not until the next day, and after lunch, Mrs. Henderson reloaded the present box and made the class sing again. I stood up and retrieved my camel from the basket, without delay.